This is a very wasteful way of getting communications to somewhat compensate the lack of competition in US telco market.

It has nothing to do with competition. You could have as many competitors as possible and no one is going to put a cell tower up in a remote location.

It has everything to do with the lack of competition. US tax payers paid $4 billion to AT&T in 2004 for fiber to -every- home. And that was never delivered, yet they keep getting more money. This is regulatory capture.

We're not talking about fiber, we are talking about cellphone coverage. As I said, no company will put a tower up in a remote area.

You're dead wrong. AT&T is the largest carrier and they ARE doing it

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/general/at-t-wins-early-appr...

Your article is about landlines AND they received government approval to end service.

We’re talking about remote areas of the US that have almost no local population.

Why would a company put a cell tower in the middle of federal land where no one is allowed to live?

I've been on tiny Indonesian islands far from anything that could be considered civilization, and they'll have cell towers more often than not.

Because Indonesia has a massive population, far more people than the US and much more densly populated. It's internet users are vastly mobile as opposed to desktop or LAN connections. The US geographic landscape and computer use landscape are entirely different.

Also government subsidised

> Because Indonesia has a massive population

Indonesia has less people, ~280 vs ~340 million for the US.

> much more densly populated.

Technically true, but as I said in my comment I'm talking about remote/small islands, closer to Flores/Papua to the east, not Jawa where the overwhelming majority (as in, literally more than half the country) of the population lives. Jawa alone has ~145 million people, Sumatra around 60 and Sulawesi around 20, the rest are spread out all over the country and the densities are much smaller, not to mention that those smaller regions have much fewer resources available to them to begin with.

> It's internet users are vastly mobile as opposed to desktop or LAN connections.

The comment I was replying to was talking about companies/the gov't being reluctant to erect cell towers though? So I don't see the relevancy here, I was saying that even tiny, sparsely populated islands in some of the poorest regions of Indonesia have cell tower coverage, and with those towers, decent internet.

> The US geographic landscape and computer use landscape are entirely different.

Arguably it's infinitely easier to erect infrastructure when you're not an archipelago. Plus, the US is the richest country on earth, I'm sure you guys can figure out how to string along fiber even in the most rural of areas, you've somehow managed to do it across the atlantic ocean after all.

Eh, I think the economics of rural areas play a role as well, and this “wasteful” way is actually very well suited for serving that long tail.

But the long tail isn't served. The reality of your statement turns out to be that, if there aren't enough customers to justify an expensive tower or wire, no service will be provided at all.

That’s my point, they are serviced by solutions like Starlink because they don’t rely on towers or wires and are just available everywhere.

I’m writing this from a small island in a remote country using Starlink, and it’s very popular over here for people that want reliable internet.

Awesome. So we agree!

The star link network is actually remarkably cost effective in getting internet access to rural areas. There's a reason that these areas still have poor connectivity: it's just not cost effective for anyone to build land based infrastructure there.

SpaceX spend a few billions on StarLink. But if you look at how much network operators have spent over the years on cables, base stations, etc. it's not all that much for a network that offers high bandwidth access all over the planet.

Adding 100K more satellites is going to make Star Link a direct competitor to many of these operators.

It occurred to me after reading the original story that if space based internet gets fast enough, we'll stop using any other kind for most purposes. That means, as a platform, SpaceX could carry a significant amount of the entire world's internet traffic. No wonder Elon is interested.

Not enough bandwidth

Yet. I one was one of the first people in Silicon Valley to have DSL when dialup had that same bandwidth problem. I posit it will be solved.

Starlink often struggles in thunder storms.

we should lay fiber about it, not do this wasteful atmosphere polluting bullshit

Just a choice of polluting the ground or the air.

How often do you need to replace the cable in the ground compared to the satellites in the air?

I can give an example. My parents live in the UK, and their house was built in 1985. A couple of years ago the copper phone line had to be replaced as it had degraded somebow. The operator had to dig up and reinstall their driveway, brick pathway and garden. Now the operator is installing fibre to replace copper phone lines, so again they need to dig it up.

One days work for one house. Multiply that across an entire nation, and work out how much diesel is burned for that. Where they live you can't get cable (not very common in the UK), but if it was available I guess there would have been another digging day in the 90s.

Installing subterranean cable is presumably a choice right? Couldn't it be above ground?

In my area they did a whole street with fibre in one week.

If your trip to desert is worth polluting whole low orbit and high atmosphere is debatable. Same goes for hypothetical business there. Maybe building towers would be a better idea in long term.

Once upon a time, people did long RV trips without internet access. Or even (cellular) phone access.

They did and it used to take a lot of planning, using paper maps, getting lost etc.

Just like once people didn't use electricity or vaccines or indoor plumbing. For all its minuses the internet makes these long trips 10x easier.

Hardly, and not by a factor of ten - at best it allows for digital mapping and (unreliably) replaces an ePirb.

What it does do, for sure, is encourage people with no proper grounding in multi day off road adventuring to have a go and die through lack of prior experience and skills.

Similar things happen in hiking, people who shouldn't be there get encouraged by by how accessible information is to do things whereas before (most) people got info from someone knowledgeable.

Can you source a citation referring to people that had "no proper grounding in multi day off road adventuring", and were thus "encouraged" to " go and die through lack of prior experience and skills" via Starlink?

Whether you like it or not, Starlink being an easily-accesible internet service has likely saved dozens of noobs from certain death by offering emergency eSIM services, GPS navigation, or communciation systems that they wouldn't otherwise have. Can I prove it objectively? Likely not (outside of forum anecdotes), but I wasn't the first to make a claim with the burden to do so.

> Can you source a citation referring to people that had "no proper grounding in multi day off road adventuring"

Sure - West Australian newspaper pretty much any week of the year - tourists come from all over the globe to visit the vast untamed outback, rent a 4x4, head out, and get into life threatening (sometimes life ending) trouble despite having a phone connection via either mobile towers or starlink. You know, no charge, no backup, no paper maps, no experience, etc.

Whether you like it or not, ePiRBs being an easily accesible service has actually saved dozens of noobs and experienced personal from certain death by offering emergency service alerting - Fact! (and no internet required)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_position-indicating_...

No, I don't like it. Because it relies on someone getting a specialized piece of hardware in advance of an emergency. That's a silly notion.

You could do that, or you could do the 21st century thing, and put up enough satellites to have emergency-grade LTE coverage across the entire country. Compatible with any smartphone.

> it relies on someone getting a specialized piece of hardware in advance of an emergency.

Like Starlink? Glad we agree.

> to have emergency-grade LTE coverage across the entire country.

Literally does not stop people dying and is not a substitute for knowing what you're doing in remote areas.

The claim was:

  For all its minuses the internet makes these long trips 10x easier.

which is false - at best it's a 5% improvement on what was required as prep for long remote trips before Starlink.

A big issue with yelling help! from a remote location rather than having the skill set to self rescue is that now third parties (rescuers) are putting themselves at risk and using their time and resources which may or may not be reimbursed.

There's LTE from space already btw in Australia. Will one day be a carrier requirement.

In a perfect world, everyone is perfectly knowledgeable and prepared for any eventuality and nothing bad and unexpected ever happens at all.

May I remind you what world are we living in?

Denying emergency comms to people who didn't buy specialized hardware because "they should have prepared better" sounds like social darwinism to me.

Especially in an age when everyone has in their pocket a smartphone that's crammed full of advanced RF tech. Starlink has Direct to Cell on new sats, iPhones can use GEO satcom - what's your excuse?

> what's your excuse?

I fetch idiots out of remote areas.

With or without Starlink, they're unprepared.

People that are prepared for remote areas have been getting by without it for millennia.

What's you're actual on the ground experience here?

So, you want to save people, but you also want people who were not "prepared for remote areas" to just die somewhere, out of contact and out of your sight, and you also want to bitch about how stupid and unprepared they were?

That sure is a funny way of doing things.

Yes, that's the problem.

> using paper maps, getting lost etc

All part of the adventure!

Once upon a time people used to walk everywhere.

Definitely! I was doing the observing during an RV trip, but my comment was about how it impacts business even more.

People used to die trying to cross the country

Indeed! That explains the popularity (and realism) of the Oregon Trail game.

Yes and people lived without internet. You should be one of those.

What an argument.

Internet access is good.

You can call your relatives and check in. That has been huge. My relatives traveled the US in the 80s and could call home maybe once a week? Month? Now intl calls are free.

You don't need to check everything everyime like social media apps brainrot.

Do you know what also is important?

To know when a asteroid is on its way to us.

All that satellites make discovering them more difficult.

Could star link add some cameras on the back of those satellites and make the detection actually much better?

Gotta be online 24/7 or what?

Many, many businesses do, including ones we all like such as power and water and firemen, etc. Th thrust of my comment was about business and public infrastructure as a social good.